'Keep Thy home': Family fights to stop deportation of Stockton man to Cambodia

Since November, Thy Tuy has sat inside of the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Facility in Bakersfield, uncertain of what his future holds.

Tuy, a lifelong Stocktonian, is facing deportation to Cambodia, a country he has never stepped foot in. He doesn’t know when his deportation will occur and has been living in limbo for the last 10 weeks.

The Record spoke to Tuy by phone from the Bakersfield facility, where immigration officials are holding him pending deportation.

“It’s nerve-racking,” Tuy said. “It’s like no matter how good you do here in the states, you could just be picked up and sent back … but it doesn’t stop me from choosing to do good anyway.”

Escaping genocide

Tuy’s family is from Cambodia, but they fled the Southeast Asian nation before he was born. They, along with tens of thousands of other Cambodians, fled to Thailand in the 1970s to escape genocide committed by the Khmer Rogue regime.

Tuy was born in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1983, though his family didn’t stay there for long. They settled in Stockton when Tuy was only a year old, becoming lawful permanent residents — also known as green card holders — and eventually U.S. citizens.

But, unlike his family, Tuy wasn’t able to obtain citizenship.

In 2006, Tuy, who was 22, and his then-girlfriend tied up a Stockton family in their home, stole $500 and a safe, and kidnapped the family’s 16-year-old daughter, triggering a statewide Amber Alert.

The daughter wasn’t physically hurt, but she was threatened with a knife, according to a 2007 article published in The Record.

A San Joaquin County judge sentenced Tuy to 20 years in state prison.

It was while behind bars that Tuy decided to turn his life around.

“Within the fifth year, I realized prison wasn’t a place I wanted to be,” he said. “There was nothing there. My family wasn’t there. I realized I was in a rock bottom situation and that’s when I found God."

Tuy became a Christian. He started reading the Bible and attending church.

"I started going to school and self-help groups, knowing in the long run, it was going to benefit me," he said.

Tuy earned his GED and received mental health treatment while in prison. His sentence was shortened due to good behavior.

He was released from California State Prison, Corcoran in October 2022 after spending 16 years behind bars.

“My son and my sister picked me up in Bakersfield, and from there, I went home,” Tuy said. “I went straight to Stockton and I started over.”

Life after prison

After leaving prison, Tuy said he was determined to make a better life for himself.

Back in Stockton, he helped care for his elderly mother and tried to make up for lost time with his 19-year-old son, Troy.

Part of Tuy’s life after prison included picking up odd jobs to make money and attending parole group meetings through GEO Reentry Services.

“I had to have a work visa to find work so it was kind of hard, but I found a Facebook group called ‘Community Labor Partnership,’” Tuy said. “I shot them my name and number. If there were moving gigs within a certain radius, they would text me and I would help people move for two or five hours, and get paid in cash.”

He was also assigned parole groups five days a week.

"I didn’t have a license or a ride, so I would walk to catch the bus and get transferred to another bus, then another bus just to make it to the other side of town," he said. "It didn’t bother me. I enjoyed it.”

Tuy was discharged from parole in June.

“That was a good feeling, to get off of parole, and then I was only under ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) supervision,” he said.

ICE check-ins

Tuy had regular check-in appointments with ICE: typically one in-person and one phone appointment per month.

But, on Nov. 15, what he thought was going to be a routine check-in turned out to be something more.

Tuy said he spent the night at his mom’s house and woke up around 8 a.m. to two missed calls from his ISAP (Intensive Supervision Appearance Program) case manager. When he called his case manager back, she informed him that he forgot to write his signature on paperwork at his last check-in and told him to report to the ICE office.

“I had a feeling that they might take me in,” Tuy said, “but I didn’t challenge their ways when I was out there. Whatever they asked, I did it. I reported, I checked in, I did drug tests, whatever.”

When he arrived at the ICE office, Tuy asked an agent in the lobby if he was going to be taken into custody so that he can notify his family. He recalled the agent saying, "No, no, just come in."

Shortly after, Tuy learned that he was being taken into ICE custody and may be deported to Cambodia.

"The ICE agent told me that I'm probably going to get sent back in January, but they're not telling me the exact date," Tuy said. "Even though I was doing good for some time, it just goes to show there are certain things that are out of my control."

Stay application denied

Lee Ann Felder-Heim is a staff attorney in the immigrant rights program at the Asian Law Caucus — a legal and civil rights organization serving low-income, immigrant, and underserved Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. She has been working closely with Tuy and his family since he was detained by ICE.

Felder-Heim filed an Application for a Stay of Deportation or Removal in December. A “stay” decision issued by the Board of Immigration Appeals temporarily prevents the Department of Homeland Security from executing an order of removal, deportation, or exclusion, according to the Department of Justice's website.

"In the application, we talk about his rehabilitation, his proven ability to comply with ICE's requirements, and just the fact that he's changed for the better and has a huge community in the U.S., but has actually never stepped foot in Cambodia, where ICE is trying to deport him," Felder-Heim said.

Attached to the application were letters of support written by community members.

The letter-writing campaign was spearheaded by Empowering Marginalized Asian Communities (EMAC), a nonprofit that works to build safe and thriving Southeast Asian communities. They were formed in response to the increase in immigration raids, separation of mixed-status families, and ICE detentions and deportations in Stockton.

Despite community support, Tuy's application for a stay was denied on Jan. 12.

Felder-Heim said that she and Tuy are now asking ICE's San Francisco Field Office, who oversees the Bakersfield facility, to reconsider his stay application.

"They have the power to overturn the initial denial. It's not something that happens frequently, but we're hoping that by putting the evidence of Thy's community support in front of the S.F. office, we'll get them to overturn this denial," Felder-Heim said.

A story told before

J.R. Arimboanga, EMAC's communications director, said that Tuy's story is similar to the stories of countless Southeast Asian refugees who resettled into low-income communities without support or resources.

"They were thrown into some of the worst neighborhoods here in Stockton, in some of the most under-resourced schools," he said.

"I was a teacher for over a decade. I'm very familiar with how we fail our students, particularly our students who don't speak English or come from families whose parents don't speak English and are unfamiliar with U.S. culture. System after system fail them and then they're pushed into a life of substance abuse and crime."

Arimboanga believes that politics and stereotypes of immigrants are partly to blame for the thousands of Southeast Asian American refugees facing deportation after decades-old convictions.

"There's this general idea that there are good and bad immigrants," he said. "With formerly incarcerated people ... most of the charges they're being deported for, particularly Southeast Asians, are decades old and they've done their time for it."

Since 1998, more than 17,000 Southeast Asian Americans have received orders of removal and nearly 2,000 have been deported, according to the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.

A new bill is seeking to change that.

In August, the Southeast Asian Deportation Relief Act of 2023 was introduced in Congress. The legislation aims to end deportations of Southeast Asian refugees who resettled in the U.S. and provide protections for the more than 15,000 people with final orders of removal.

It would also allow refugees who have already been deported to Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos to return to the U.S.

But until that bill passes, families and partners of refugees are left hoping they will not be separated.

"I know he did something that is not forgivable, but people make poor choices," said Korlleyan Teng, Tuy's girlfriend. "If he's able to come out of the rehabilitation programs and use what he's learned for good, I feel like he should be given a chance to use what he learned out here and give back to the community. Part of our mistakes is our growth."

Record reporter Hannah Workman covers news in Stockton and San Joaquin County. She can be reached at hworkman@recordnet.com or on Twitter @byhannahworkman. Support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow.

This article originally appeared on The Record: Family fights to stop deportation of Stockton man to Cambodia